The Revenge of Herman Leavitt

The rest of the story about driving in Berlin is that I got in an accident. I was waiting at a traffic light, and when the light turned green, I turned right (you can’t turn right on red in Germany). There was an empty bus lane to my right, which I thought I was supposed to avoid. As I was turning, I heard a screech of brakes and felt an impact on the rear right corner, so I pulled around the corner and stopped.

It was a taxi driver, who was going straight ahead in the bus lane. She hit my rear right bumper with her rear left bumper and did minor damage to both. On the Trabant, it broke the plastic corner piece; on the taxi, a small dent and scratched paint.

To make matters worse, she was seemingly the only person in Germany who spoke not a word of English. Under the circumstances, I could remember no German. After a lot of back and forth, she managed to convey that a) she didn’t want to involve the police any more than I did and b) she was willing to take a cash settlement of 200 euros (this after calling someone — presumably her company). Since it was pretty clearly my fault, I went to an ATM around the corner and withdrew 200 euros, for which she gave me a sort of handwritten receipt with her license number and basic information. (I had already taken a picture of her license plate, but it seemed to show good faith on her part.) As far as I could tell, no mention was made of insurance.

When I returned the car that evening, I told the guy that I had damaged the car and showed him the bumper. He said, “Just the plastic? No problem! I have a lot of those things.” So everyone was happy, except for me presumably.

Trabant Berlin

Or maybe so. In 1986, Alcalde and I were cruising down Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles in my 1972 Datsun 1200 (a car in much worse condition than that Trabant) and we were sideswiped by one Herman Leavitt of Century Park East, who was driving his new SUV and did not yet have insurance. He hit us at about 5 mph and mangled the driver’s side door. We settled for $150 and did not involve any police or insurance companies. $150 in 1986 is worth about $335 today, or 285 euros, so in a way I just borrowed the money from Herman Leavitt in Los Angeles to pay a taxi driver in Berlin 31 years later. And I still have 85 euros on account.

I am Even Steven.